Perseverance’s cameras captured Phippsaksla, a tall iron-nickel rock that stands out against the flat Martian terrain (Photo: NASA)
NASA's Perseverance rover has added another mystery to Mars. While surveying the Vernodden region of Jezero Crater, the rover stumbled upon an oddly shaped boulder dissimilar from anything else in the area.
The team would later refer to the feature as Phippsaksla. At about 31 inches wide as the rock stood tall among scattered, flatter stones, making scientists wonder how it came to rest in this ancient landscape.
The SuperCam instrument, which analyzes rock chemistry with a laser and spectrometers, showed that Phippsaksla contained unusually high amounts of iron and nickel. Those elements commonly appear in meteorites forged inside the cores of large asteroids.
That chemical fingerprint raised a remarkable possibility with the rock may not have formed on Mars at all. Instead, it might be a long-traveled fragment from another corner of the solar system.
Metallic rocks on Mars aren't unfamiliar to rovers. For example, Curiosity had made discoveries of iron-nickel meteorites in Gale Crater, like the famous Lebanon rock from 2014 and the Cacao meteorite discovered in 2023.
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Opportunity and Spirit also found a couple of them during their missions. With Jezero Crater's geologic history and plenty of small impact scars, it was well expected for scientists that Perseverance would also find one. Maybe this is the discovery that fits that expectation: Phippsaksla.
What makes Phippsaksla even more intriguing, though, is its location. It lies outside Jezero's main crater floor, resting on bedrock shaped by ancient impacts. That suggests that it may have survived billions of years of erosion and planetary change.
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The rock's shape and isolation raise further questions about how long it has been exposed and whether it arrived during a period of heavy meteoritic bombardment.
Now, NASA's team is working to confirm whether Phippsaksla is, in fact, a meteorite. The rover is studying whether this rock-or others like it-could hold clues connected with past life on Mars.
The space agency just revealed the best evidence to date for biological signatures in a sample called Sapphire Canyon and collected from a dried riverbed in the same region. If both findings stand up, they could rewrite what we know about Mars' ancient history and its potential to have once harbored life.
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Disclaimer: Information is based on current scientific reports and mission updates. It is intended for general insight and not for official scientific interpretation.
